🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

Actor Terry Crews walks through his life, picking stories that correspond to different themes around which his experience has brought wisdom (chapter titles are “Identity”, “Agency”, “Masculinity”, etc). Stories include his impoverished childhood in Flint, Michigan, his struggle to overcome his porn addition, his experience as the victim of sexual assault at the hands of a high-powered Hollywood executive. Crews has been through, and overcome, and learned, a lot!

👀 How I Discovered It

I found out Crews had put out a memoir when I saw & read this excerpt of the book in The Wall Street Journal. Knowing a few bits and pieces about other parts of his life, I suspected the full story was worth a read.

🎨 Impressions

He has a contemplative, detailed, engaging writing style that pulled me along the entire book.

I walked away from the book endlessly impressed by the patience and perseverance of Crews' wife, Becky, who has worked really hard to help keep their marriage together, and to help Terry emotionally mature.

I also walked away impressed with the candor and humility of the author. Crews really goes into depth about his personal challenges & pain; both the baggage that he carried with him from his childhood/early adulthood, as well as his own set of independently acquired personal demons.

☘️ How the Book Affected Me

I decided to pick up this book after reading the WSJ excerpt because, in at least one sense, Terry and I fit a similar profile: we’re both over 6'2", we both weigh over 225 lbs, we both like lifting weights, and we are both survivors of sexual abuse. I thought Terry might have some wisdom or insight that I could relate to around the ideas of masculinity, power, and shame… and he did! I’m not in a place to share specifics about how hearing his story helped me process my own experiences, but suffice it to say that was a great book for me to read, and has helped to start unlock some previously locked doors in my emotional psyche.

I really admire how the obstacles that Terry has overcome has led him to a place of compassion, reconciliation, and ideological centrism & balance in his life. I feel like most stories I’ve read, where someone goes through this much trauma and pain, ends in cynicism and extremism. Terry clearly has a beautiful heart, and I came away from this book with him as a role model.

Terry (like me) also grew up in a conservative religious environment, and (like me) a big part of his personal spiritual journey has been overcoming his distrust and rejection of religion in order to come to a productive middle ground. Lots of people only make it to the “distrust and rejection” stage, so it was cool to read about how he healed his relationship with organized religion.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

“I used to fly off the handle at people for the slightest lapse or imperfection, and it was because I was always mad at myself for the slightest lapse or imperfection.”

“when men are made to feel guilt and shame around sex, it can cause them to hate women, because they are the ones ‘tempting them’ into sin.”

“Self-righteousness is the thing that allows us to lift ourselves up in the same way that dehumanizing others allows us to lower them down. Once we allow that dynamic to take root, we’ve created a moral monster—and the monster is ourselves. […] Anyone can fall into the trap of dehumanizing others. Anyone can become so convinced of the goodness of their own cause that they will excuse any action that supports it, and in the end they will wind up no better than the abusers they set out to destroy.”